Tag Archives: cardboard

I’ve spent perhaps 150 hours working on this in CAD and less than 30 in the studio prototyping. Once all the patterns are printed and stuck to the double thick cereal boxes I think my students will have a shot at building their own in 12 hours of class time.

I finally have a complete design. There has been a lot of back and fourth between CAD and studio: design an element, build a prototype, redesign, tinker, second prototype, sketch, think about it for a while, third prototype. So even though I have yet to build a complete clock I do have some confidence that it will work.

But first a vacation back to the Fatherland to celebrate my Dad’s 70th Birthday!

Moments after I took this video the escapement stopped. Then I made “improvements” which made it worse. Likely the whole thing needs to be scrapped but it only took me 30 minutes to make so no big deal. You can’t get too precious with cardboard.

I had been pondering the best way insert bushings into cardboard for days when it came to me while I was putting on my daughter’s shoes — grommets! A little sanding with 220 grit on the 1/4″ dowel and it runs quite nicely. I’d didn’t have any 1/8″ dowel on hand but to my delight, I found that bamboo skewers are a remarkably consistent 0.005″ less than 1/8″.

The double thickness of Cheerios box may be a bit of challenge to cut for 10-year-olds, but with sharp scissors and some determination I really think they can do it. They’re too young for carpal tunnel syndrome right?